The Man, His Vision And His Will: Why Soludo Is The Choice

HENRY CHIGOZIE DURU, PhD

Governance is a hugely complex art. Any artist who sets out to embark on this craft must be prepared to manoeuvre through its formidable web of challenges and tricks. While some embrace leadership and emerge successful, others end up villains and even having to nurse some wounds incurred in the course of that misadventure. Yet, there are very few, emphasis, very few, whose leadership exploits become iconic, a living monument in the gallery of human civilisations, which will inspire the present and future generations. These are leaders that inscribe their legacies indelibly on collective memories.

Naturally, everyone who  aspires to  leadership wants to be counted among this special breed. However, mere good intention isn’t enough to make one counted. Not even talent is sufficient.  While these qualities – good intention and talent – are definitely important, the artist, in addition, must possess enough courage to visualise big, to ideate beyond the conventional, and dream beyond the ordinary. Further, he must be possessed of the steely will to execute the dream, overcoming  doubts that usually haunt big and extraordinary visions. In other words, the artist-leader must be gifted with a deep-penetrating creative insight and a steely heart; he must be a man of uncommon vision and unflagging courage.

Enter Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, a man who perfectly fits the description. He is the man with the vision and the will. This, he has demonstrated through his well known sterling performances in roles he has been saddled with over the years. Given the outstanding elegance of these performances even the most sceptical of the doubting Thomases have lost their doubting urge.

Soludo’s piece of wonder, by way of the famous banking consolidation he engineered as the CBN helmsman, has been a notorious fact. No need recounting it, for even the deaf has heard. Hence, I will only focus on what that whole episode says of the character, Chukwuma Soludo.  So, besides the far-reaching effect that reform has left on our economy, it is a living testimonial to the extraordinary vision and the iron will of the Isuofia-born technocrat. Truly, it was an idea no one saw coming, as it could only have been conceived and nurtured in a mind as ingenious as Soludo’s in search of a final answer to the long years of pains, groans and ruins wrought by the instability of a dwarfish and fragile banking sector that had sunk fortunes of individuals and families. And when the idea was made public, it seemed almost an impossibility on the implementation front given its sheer magnitude and novelty as well as our unending failure to implement even the simplest of programmes as a nation. So the public scepticism that greeted this idea then is perfectly understandable on that account.

However, undeterred by the doubting public and many powerful vested interests that were about to lose their positions in the banking industry, Soludo, a man of unbending will, stood to defend and garner public support for this vision of his, which many were yet to understand then. I recall seeing him on television almost on daily basis talking about the twin strategies of “mergers” and “acquisitions” as the way to transform the industry into fewer but very strong banks each built on the foundation of 25 billion Naira capital base, at the minimum. The frenzy of the moment birthed a famous journaleese “ConSOLUDOtion” in the Nigerian press. As it turned out, by morning of January 1, 2006, Nigerians woke up to an unprecedented New Year gift of a fortified banking sector that would positively alter in time the economic climate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This was thanks to the extraordinary vision and unbending will of one man.

Soludo’s extraordinary vision and steely will were once more on display when he soon after announced some far-reaching currency reforms. The old ₦5, ₦10, ₦20 and ₦50 denominations were to be withdrawn and replaced with polymer notes. The new currencies would dispense with the Arabic inscriptions on the old currencies (which over the years had bred controversies and acrimony) and replace these with the values of the respective currencies written in the three major indigenous languages of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. Despite the huge resistance and press propaganda of some ethno-religious bigots against this move, the man of iron will was unswervingly focused, recognising the paramount need to harness our currencies as an instrument of ethno-cultural integration as against division. Also, as part of this currency reform, this man of rare vision saw the need to end the exclusion suffered by people living with disabilities when it came to reading our currencies, and so added on the new currencies features that enable the blind to “read” the value of a note by touch. On the strength of all this, who can still reasonably impeach Soludo’s revolutionary vision and irrepressible willpower?

Prof Soludo’s phenomenal vision and strong will came glowing again in what would have been the biggest currency reform since the civil war-enforced change from Pound Sterling to Naira. It was the Naira redenomination aimed at adjusting our currency digits to make one naira almost equivalent to one dollar then. Again, the eloquent professor of economics had to vigorously defend the new reform before the doubting, if not panicky, public. I can still remember how he did this with commanding lucidity and disarming reasoning, citing countries that had followed that path with successes. However, unlike his other reforms, this one could not see the light of the day as the visioner suddenly lost the indispensable political support for implementing a reform of such magnitude when the curtains fell on Obasanjo’s second tenure on May 29, 2007. Obasanjo wrote in his book, My Watch, that by the time he was living office, all was set for take off of this reform and Soludo was to start implementing the details, but that his successor, Yar’Adua, was rather unwisely advised to suspend the plan. Reading the book of Yar’Adua’s spokesperson, Segun Adeniyi, Death, Politics and Power, one is clear that the reform suffered the fate it suffered not for its poverty of brilliance but for being politically unlucky.

There’s no need retelling the tales of Soludo’s vision and will as manifested in the emergence of and successful operation of the African Finance Corporation (AFC). Or should we start to talk about NEEDS?

To cut the long story short, the simple reason why Soludo is the best man to be the next Anambra State governor is his possession of the capacity to see before others can see, to see deeper than them, and to understand before they do. (His brilliant fore-sighted  discourse on the practicability of lockdown in Africa which immediately caused a shift in thinking and strategy on the COVID-19 quagmire across the continent is a very recent example). That’s vision elevated to the dimension of ingenuity. *He is a man of profound vision.* Here is also also a man who does not  hesitate to act when he has to. He does not waver in the face of threats, and neither does he agonise in the face of hostility, but does exactly what he has to for things to move. *That’s a man of iron will.* These two qualities – *extraordinary vision* and *unbending will* – make Soludo my perfect choice for Agu Awka come the “Ides of March” 2022.

– Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches Journalism and Mass Communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.